In the Name of Science: Suffering, Sacrifice, and the ... · had been investigating x-rays since the news of Roentgen’s discovery first hit the States in 1896, working primarily

563AMERICAN ROENTGENOLOGY

American Quarterly, Vol. 53, No. 4 (December 2001) © 2001 American Studies Association

563

In the Name of Science: Suffering, Sacrifice,and the Formation of American Roentgenology

REBECCA HERZIG

Bates College

ACCOUNTS OF EARLY AMERICAN EXPERIMENTATION WITH X-RAYS TEND TO LINGER

over the ghastly wounds of scientific practice: ruptured blisters,cancerous limbs, and pus-ridden grafts.1 Curiously, these descriptionsof decaying flesh are joined by vigorous assertions of practitioners’unflagging devotion to science; scrupulous litanies of dismembermentand death glorify, rather than trouble, the quest for new knowledge. Inplace of cool-headed assessments of radiation protection or surgicalanesthetics, we find instead stress on experimenters’ willing—evenfervent—embrace of further pain. In 1926, for instance, the New YorkTimes reported the seventy-second operation on Johns Hopkins Univer-sity roentgenologist Frederick H. Baetjer, a physician whose years ofresearch with x-radiation had already cost him eight fingers and oneeye. “Despite the suffering he has undergone in the interest of science,”the paper announced, Baetjer planned to “continue his work as long ashe lives, fingers or no fingers.”2 Journalists were not alone in laudinginvestigators’ eager return to the source of their wounds. Describing ayoung physician who continued his research with the ray even aschunks of his fingers, hands, and chest were disintegrating from cancer,a fellow x-ray investigator averred that the physician’s “enthusiasm forhis work never faded up to the moment of his end.”3 Even non-fatalresearch offered a chance to fortify the ethos of bodily punishmentpermeating early x-ray practice. The eminent x-ray experimenter andGeneral Electric engineer William D. Coolidge, for example, waslampooned at company dinner by “N. Thusiasm,” a figure who labored

Rebecca Herzig teaches courses on race, gender, science, and technology at BatesCollege in Lewiston, Maine.

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away at new experimental problems “while everyone else slept.”4

What are we to make of these varied accounts of early twentieth-century scientific research, specifically their common focus on investi-gators’ ardent suffering? Of what significance is this striking recurrenceof “enthusiasm” (en theos)—with its connotations of spiritual posses-sion, of “god within”?5

To be sure, the valorization of voluntary suffering was hardly uniqueto early roentgenologists. In the decades immediately preceding theGreat War, the moral authority of pain was marshaled equally by poetsand pastors, generals and presidents, managers and laborers. Severalrecent histories have artfully amplified this trend, suggesting thatrenewed emphasis on stringent bodily disciplines—from fasting to self-flagellation—helped assuage fin-de-siècle anxieties about feminiza-tion, racial degeneration, and other perceived threats to bourgeoisAmerican manhood.6 Less well understood, however, are the relationsbetween such religious, bodily disciplines and the seemingly secular,cerebral realm of late nineteenth-century natural science. Indeed,exaggerated assessments of the “war” between science and religion inAmerican history have long impaired such understandings.7 Seen inthis light, such a voluble preoccupation with debilitating, painfulscientific investigation would seem to merit further consideration—ameans by which to query received accounts of late nineteenth-centurysecularization.

Focusing on the work of early x-ray investigators, I here describehow voluntary self-wounding—which investigators frequently termed“sacrifice”—shaped the boundaries and character of one field ofscience—roentgenology—in the United States. My discussion does notaddress tantalizing (yet fundamentally opaque) questions of “personalmotivation”—why some investigators embraced ulcerating wounds,spreading tumors, and repeated amputations while others sought avail-able radiation protection. I focus not on the mindset of individuals whochose to suffer and die for science but rather on that “for” which theytook on such pain. The essay concerns, in other words, the advent of aparticular concept of enthusiastic suffering, one born in and through theallegedly godless world of late nineteenth-century physical research. Inwhat historical conditions could roentgenologists claim to suffer anddie in the name of “science”?8 What effects did such sacrificial claimshave on the organization and solidity of the new field of roentgenol-ogy? How, in turn, did the increasing cultural authority of scienceshape the limits and possibilities of voluntary suffering?


The emerging field of roentgenology, I suggest, gained definitionthrough the spectacular deaths and mutilations of its adherents.9 As anumber of scholars of nationalism have noted, willingness to shedblood coalesces the fictive borders of the state, much as ritualizedreligious violence lends coherence and immediacy to intangible, super-natural deities. Both nations and gods acquire authority through thevoluntary sacrifice of their adherents.10 In a similar manner, Americanroentgenology incorporated around the visible injury of its subjects.While bringing new cultural authority to a fledgling profession and itsenigmatic x-ray, the willing suffering of roentgenologists also served toinvigorate a larger vision of the past, present, and future of science.Like “America” itself, the amorphous body of science roused theprospect of continual progress, of a beneficent and boundless unfold-ing. And, like America after the Civil War, the legitimacy of thisimagined body—a sense of definition, autonomy, and purpose—wassecured partly through destruction, through the considered squanderingof life and limb. At the center of this devotional expenditure were x-rayinvestigators, producing the cause of roentgenology even while suffer-ing in its name. As the wizened remains of martyrs convey the prospectof eternal life to the faithful, or the wounds of soldiers come to bearnational significance, so, too, the disintegrating bodies of individual x-ray investigators were reclaimed as pieces of the ancient and immortalbody of Science.

The organization of a roentgenological profession began shortlyafter Roentgen’s announcement of his discovery of a “new kind oflight” in the closing weeks of 1895. In the first months of x-rayexperimentation, investigation was unhindered by regulations on thepurchase or maintenance of x-ray equipment. Anyone with meansmight purchase static generators, induction coils, x-ray tubes, andsundry other experimental components. Investigators, who tended towork alone or with small, local groups of other interested persons,flocked to the new technology. They carried with them an eclectic arrayof interests and backgrounds, including surgery, general medicalpractice, physics, photography, and electrical engineering. These dis-parate groups soon organized, taking a major step forward with theformation of the American Roentgen Ray Society in 1900. The infantspecialty was pushed further down the path toward professionalizationby the publication of the damning 1910 Flexner Report, which stirred


reform throughout American medical communities. World war pro-vided additional stimulus for social and technical expansion, andmembership in regional and national roentgenological societies grewaccordingly.11

Throughout this period, x-ray practice was inescapably manual, asinvestigators gingerly shifted the glass plates on which radiographsappeared, carefully rearranged broken limbs and other objects forbetter observation, and passed their own hands beneath active rayswhen testing and modifying equipment and dosages. Today, medicaland dental x-ray technicians often exit the room entirely after eachadjustment of patient or apparatus prior to re-activating radiationequipment; in contrast, early twentieth-century investigators oftenperformed each task beneath (or near) a charged x-ray tube. Further-more, early x-ray equipment was testy and fragile, requiring lengthy,repeated exposures for therapeutic or diagnostic effect.12 Fingers,hands, arms and faces—the parts of the investigator’s body mostinvolved in this meticulous manual labor—were thus particularlyvulnerable to radiation damage.13

The first American known to die after prolonged exposure to the x-ray, Clarence Madison Dally (b. 1865), succumbed to cancer even asthe first x-ray professional societies were being established. A glass-blower employed in Thomas Edison’s New Jersey laboratory, Dallyhad been investigating x-rays since the news of Roentgen’s discoveryfirst hit the States in 1896, working primarily on the development of thefocus-tube and improved fluorescing chemicals. Shortly after Dallybegan his research, he began to experience the effects of prolongedradiation exposure. By 1900, Dally lost all the hair on the front of hisscalp, on his hands and fingers, and his eyebrows and eyelashes. Theskin on his hands grew swollen and painful, and he continuouslyswitched hands in order to continue his work with the ray. In 1902, aftersix years of constant pain, Dally underwent the first of a series of graftsdesigned to relieve the ulceration on his left hand. When the skin failedto graft and examinations revealed carcinoma in the remaining tissue,the hand was amputated above the wrist. The cancer continued tospread, and eventually both arms required removal. Despite the ampu-tations, Dally died from cancer in October 1904.14

Other, even more conspicuous deaths soon followed. On August 3,1905, Elizabeth Fleischmann-Ascheim, known at the time as “the mostexpert woman radiographer in the world,” died from x-ray induced


cancer in San Francisco after a series of amputations.15 Fleischmann-Ascheim, one of the first x-ray experts in California and one of the fewwomen in the world known for her work with the ray, gained nationalrenown for her radiographs of U.S. soldiers wounded in the Philippinesduring the Spanish-American war. On her death, major newspaperspublished full-page eulogies on “America’s Joan of Arc.”16 Fleischmann-Ascheim’s death was followed shortly by others around the country,among them Louis Andrew Weigel of Rochester, New York (1854–1906); William Carl Egelhoff of Chicago (1872–1907); WolframConrad Fuchs of Chicago (1865–1908); and Rome Vernon Wagner ofChicago (1869–1908).

By 1911, more than fifty such cases of x-ray-induced cancer hadbeen reported. Like Dally, these roentgenologists suffered repeatedamputations, excruciating pain, and shortened lives. By 1949, at leastsixty-five Americans had perished as a result of their work with x-rays.17 Of course, these statistics are hardly remarkable when comparedwith other occupational hazards of the early twentieth century (rail-roads, for instance, killed seventy-two thousand employees between1890 and 1917 on the tracks alone).18 Yet both contemporary commen-tators and later historians endowed the deaths of early x-ray investiga-tors with significance beyond mere numbers. They became, in theperiod press and in the historical record, “martyrs to science.”

These martyrs were hardly the first investigators of the natural worldto be memorialized in overtly religious terms. Sir David Brewster’s1841 The Martyrs of Science, for instance, demonstrates an establishedtradition of scientific hagiography.19 In the U.S., however, the ideal ofsacrifice for science gained particular resonance and popularity in thelast quarter of the nineteenth century, as a reified “science” acquiredincreasing cultural prominence. Remarkably, even as practices labeled“scientific” became more institutionally diffuse and disunified, sciencecame to be represented as ever more singular, coherent, and autono-mous—a self-governing agent said to demand sacrifice.

Certainly science had been objectified earlier in the century. In 1838,for example, Joseph Henry wrote of his desire to “advance the cause”of science.20 A generation before, the American Philosophical Societyemployed a similar language of devotion to “science” when requestingfunding from the legislature of Pennsylvania.21 Yet such uses of theterm appear infrequently before the Civil War. More typically, scienceinstead referred to a certain type of mental discipline, a characteristic of


the human mind. This pervasive conception of science lingered lateinto the century. As the editor of Popular Science Monthly proclaimed in1872, science is not regarded as “applying to this or that class of objects,”but “as being, in fact, a method of the mind, a quality or character ofknowledge upon all subjects of which we can think or know.”22

This image of science as a “method of the mind” would bedramatically transformed in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.After about 1875, science rarely implied a form of mental discipline,but instead an entity or force conceived as external to practitionersthemselves. Physicist T.C. Mendenhall made this perspective clear inan 1890 address:

[W]henever the public is disposed to consider its obligations to Science andher votaries, there are some things which must not be forgotten. . . . [T]hanksto science, the whole world is now aflame. Time and space are practicallyannihilated; night is turned into day; social life is almost revolutionized; andscores of things which only a few years ago would have been pronouncedimpossible, are being accomplished daily.23

Annihilating space and time, making the impossible possible, (almost)revolutionizing social life, “science” emerges here as an active, autono-mous—and gendered—being. Externalized from the mind of man andset out into the world, a feminized science was now said to requireprotection, to need financial support, and to command sacrifice. Fiveyears later, chemist Edwin Emory Slosson made these sacrificialrequirements plain. Declaring that science has always necessitated an“immense expenditure of labor and of life,” Slosson insisted, “the mostcurious misconception is that . . . the aim of science is the cure ofdisease, the saving of human life. Quite the contrary, the aim of scienceis the advancement of human knowledge at any sacrifice of humanlife.”24 As a reified “science” gained new imaginative force in the latenineteenth century, American writers consecrated themselves anew tothe cause of its advancement.25

Specific material transformations supported this semantic change.The passage of the Morrill Land Grant Act in 1862, the adoption of theelective system at Harvard, Yale, and other denominational colleges,and the establishment of new research universities such as JohnsHopkins (1876), Clark (1889), Stanford (1891), and Chicago (1891)provided physical space for “science.” From these transformed col-leges and universities emerged a growing number of highly educated,


middle-class Americans dedicated to the promotion of “higher learn-ing.”26 These middle-class Americans, whose everyday lives wereincreasingly filled with innovations such as the telephone (patented in1876) and electricity (established with New York’s Pearl Street stationin 1882), were bombarded with claims that “science” enabled theseattention-grabbing novelties. The fanfare surrounding the opening ofEdison’s Menlo Park research laboratory in New Jersey (1876), thepopularity of spectacles such as the Centennial Exposition in Philadel-phia, and the prevalence of popular science publications all attest to latenineteenth-century lay interest in scientific research and its “resulting”technical innovation.27

Meanwhile, the organization of federal agencies, such as the Bureauof American Ethnology (1879), an independent Department of Agricul-ture (which achieved cabinet status in 1889), and the National Bureauof Standards (1901), promoted a sense of solidarity among variouspractitioners scattered around the country. So, too, did the formation ofnew professional societies such as the American Chemical Society(1876), the American Society of Naturalists (1883), and the AmericanPhysical Society (1899). A series of nationally distributed journals suchas Science (1883) and The Physical Review (1893) further unifiedinvestigators dispersed by geographical, disciplinary, and institutionallocation. The availability of large sums of capital upheld many of thesetransformations, as philanthropists enlarged endowments to libraries,museums, universities, and research agencies. In 1899 alone, donorsgave $55 million to higher education, more than $5 million to libraries,and nearly $3 million to museums.28 In short, the increasing organiza-tion and consolidation of allied resources gave new institutionalsubstance and visibility to “science.”

Even as images and practices of science were acquiring new solidityin American culture, images and practices of “sacrifice” were beingequally transformed. The valorization of sacrifice had deep roots inAmerican culture, particularly in the diverse traditions of New EnglandProtestantism. Focusing on the image of the suffering Christ on theCross, for instance, Cotton Mather often exhorted his congregations tomaster the “Holy Skill of Sacrificing.”29 Yet these inherited Christianideals gained new significance in the late Victorian period.

Alongside intensified monopoly capitalism rose concern about thecorrosive influences of consumerism, urbanization, and the consolida-


tion of unprecedented personal fortunes. Increasing emphasis on thevalue of suffering emerged as part of a larger reaction to the excesses ofcapital, an antidote to the impious influences of the nation’s gluttonouseconomic life. The pampered clamored for pain.30 Particularly asAmericans recovered from the vicious war between the states, mixedideals of self-abnegation and self-denial became intertwined with abourgeois fascination with blood sacrifice. By 1880, the massiveslaughter of the Civil War had assumed a rosy glow in the whitenational memory, and violent self-immolation seemed a way to renewthe solid values of a bygone era.31 Against the backdrop of anti-laborviolence, hideous lynchings, and open warfare over Indian lands,multiple realms of white middle-class activity were re-described inlavishly sacrificial terms. As the ideal scientist was newly constitutedas a courageous martyr, so too the ideal citizen was portrayed asgallantly offering his life for his country, the ideal artist his life for hisart, and the ideal Christian his life (or, less frequently, her life) forGod.32

Increasing stress on the value of suffering was matched by newassertions of the necessity of suffering; moral ideals seemed to springfrom natural law. Appeals to the nobility and valor of sacrifice lent aromantic gloss to the more widespread assumption—pandemic amongintellectuals in the wake of Darwin—that all progress requires somedegree of pain. Anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881)exemplified this view when noting that “civilization” owes its “presentcondition . . . to the struggles, the sufferings, the heroic exertions andthe patient toil of our barbarous, and more remotely, of our savageancestors.”33 This assumption of phylogenic sacrifice would be reca-pitulated in ontogenic theories; the necessary suppression of ancestralsavages became the necessary suppression of the savage within. Freudexemplified this view when proposing that psychic coherence arisesfrom the painful suppression of instinct. As a consequence of thecivilizing process, Freud declared in 1912, “renunciation andsuffering...cannot be avoided by the human race.”34 Freud’s pupilTheodor Reik reiterated this theme in 1941 when he described masoch-ism, a love of pain, as an eminently sensible response to the “blood andtears” which necessarily attend the individual’s psychic development.35

In Reik’s view, learning to love pain accommodates the fact that “everystep forward has to be paid with frustrations, losses, and discomfort. . . .We may deplore the fact that cultural progress includes increased


suffering for mankind—but we cannot deny it.”36 Whether “civilized”individuals or “barbarous” peoples paid the price, turn-of-the-centurythinkers commonly presumed that “progress” must rest on suffering.

However widespread the assumption that all progress (moral, institu-tional, civilized, natural) necessitated suffering, only some “suffering”appeared noble or even noteworthy. Even as figures like Henry WardBeecher came to declare suffering the “universal measure of value,”such claims typically reserved sacrificial ideals for white, middle- andupper-class men.37 An exception was found in white women, whomearlier Victorian writers characterized as endowed with a “positive loveof self-sacrifice.” They, too, entered the realm of “noble suffering,” butalmost exclusively as nobly suffering mothers.38 The valor of self-sacrifice, in other words, presumed a certain “self” at the outset. Whileself-destruction might, in the words of William James, “redeem lifefrom flat degeneration,” self-destruction offered moral redemptiononly to those already residing in positions of privilege.39

For these privileged few, however, “science” appears to have offereda comforting realm of transpersonal identification, the allure of direc-tion and purpose in a changing, confusing world. As industrializationand urbanization eroded conventional religion- and kin-based systemsof meaning, a newly reified science absorbed yearnings for signifi-cance. The pain of science, like the pain of a nation’s wars, provided away to turn misfortune into destiny, and finitude into immortality.Moreover, as with the reconstruction of “America” after the Civil War,some commentators sought to extend the new symbolic and materialpower of science through sacrificial affiliations. As the first editorial ofthe new national journal Science trumpeted in 1883, “Higher than all,[science] must be devoted to the truth. It must cheerfully undertake theseverest labor to secure it, and must deem no sacrifice too great in orderto preserve it.”40

In roentgenology, inchoate sacrificial ideals found specific expres-sion. The enigmatic new rays—appropriately named “X” by Roent-gen—confounded simple explanations of cause and effect. Like HenryAdams lying prostrate in the Gallery of Machines at the GreatExposition of 1900, early researchers struggled for metaphors adequateto the bewildering new force.41 Invisible, active at a distance, andpowerful beyond any received understanding, the uncanny x-rayinvited religious comparison. Adopting common Christian tropes,William H. Greene played on these affinities when writing to x-ray


investigator Elihu Thomson in 1896. Referring to the oozing, suppurat-ing blister Thomson obtained after he had tested the ray’s action on hisown hand, Greene queried:

Why don’t you help some of the good New England Congregationalists getup a new theory of Hell in which the quivering flesh shall be scorchedthrough and through with these rays which blast and wither but do notconsume?42

Like divine judgment, the ray seemed invested with eternal, infinitepower. And, like early Christian ascetics’ search for divine truth, thepursuit of x-ray knowledge seemed to demand the mortification of thebody, what the chemist Slosson (writing for a religious newsweekly)termed “self-immolation on the altar of science.”43

Far from a Baconian narrative of man’s domination of nature, then,here it is the scientist who is bound and submissive, obsequiouslyfulfilling science’s larger plan. Describing in meticulous, grisly detailthe loss of his fingers and lips from x-ray exposure, x-ray “pioneer”Émil Grubbé concluded that “Nature assigned this job to me, and Iconsider it a privilege to have done the part which was allotted tome.”44 While Grubbé suggested that he was “entirely unconscious ofany danger” during his early years of x-ray experimentation, hisassessment was uncommon; most other investigators eagerly stressedthe voluntary nature of their sacrifices.45 “Like the explorers ofunknown countries who suffer privations and the pangs of hunger andthirst,” wrote P.J. Hickey in his reflections on the early years of thescience, “so our predecessors in American roentgenology frequentlyand willingly brought upon themselves subsequent sufferings.”46 Hickeyand others who highlighted the deliberate nature of roentgenologists’self-injuries understood better than Grubbé the importance of voluntarismin the era’s ideals of sacrifice. The courageous willingness to sufferappears paramount: man must choose his distress, lest his actions losetheir greater meaning.

Today—in the wake of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,the transnational anti-nuclear activism of the 1980s, and the disaster atChernobyl—this emphasis on voluntary suffering may seem disingenu-ous. Steeped in popular idioms of radiation risk, twenty-first centuryreaders tend to approach early x-ray fatalities as a tragedy of ignorance,despite evidence to the contrary. “If only they had known,” we murmurto ourselves as we learn of ghastly cancers and piecemeal amputations;


“they simply didn’t realize how to protect themselves.” While surelysome experimenters abandoned the ray when learning of its potentialfor harm, it is crucial to recognize that most x-ray investigators wereneither so passive nor so unwitting as a narrative would have it.

Alarm over the dangers of prolonged x-ray exposure rose alongsidethe earliest experimentation with them. The first published reports ofhair loss after prolonged exposure appeared within weeks of Roentgen’sfirst public announcement, and x-ray investigators soon began to noticethe drying and inflammation of skin exposed to the ray.47 Already inAugust of 1896, prominent journals were carrying reports of moreserious effects. An article in the Electrical Review titled “DeleteriousEffects of X Rays on the Human Body” recounted the experience ofHerbert D. Hawks, a student at Columbia who had earned extra moneyexhibiting the new x-ray machine in a New York department store.Demonstrating this “unusually powerful X-ray outfit” for two to threehours at a time over four consecutive days, Hawks was forced to stopwork “owing to the physical effects of the X rays upon his body.” Hishands swelled and took on the appearance of having “a very deepsunburn.” Two weeks later, the skin fell off his hands, his fingernailsstopped growing, and he lost all of the hair on his face and the sides ofhis head.48 The young man’s vision was impaired, his eyelashes fellout, and his eyelids swelled. Physicians consulted on the damageresponded to the symptoms as though it were an instance of “parboil-ing.”49

Over the next several months, other electrical investigators, physicalscientists, and medical doctors engaged in x-ray research contributedtheir knowledge of the ray’s deleterious effects to the country’s leadingjournals. Boston tube manufacturer G.A. Frei reported that the skin onhis hands and the hands of a worker, “Mr. K,” turned red, hardened,blistered, and fell off after repeated exposure to the ray. In addition,K.’s eyes burned and ached, and his fingernails felt as “if pounded bya hammer.”50 In September, an investigator from the University ofMinnesota described the “angry sore” which had once been hisforehead, and a mouth so cracked, bleeding, and blistered that he couldingest only tiny bits of liquidized food.51 In October 1896, theprominent journal Nature carried a full-page description of the ghastlyresults of one researcher’s prolonged exposure to the ray.52 By the endof the year, reports of x-ray burns were front-page news in mostprominent electrical, medical, and scientific periodicals.53


As medical and electrical experts became aware of the effects ofprolonged exposure, lay discussions of the x-ray also included anawareness of danger. Even the first popular books on the x-raydiscussed its potential for “destruction,” and by the turn of the century,physicians were compelled to assuage anxious patients before conduct-ing x-ray examinations.54 X-ray patients had been exhibiting severelesions since the first year of the ray’s use, and between 1900 and 1902,patients who had been injured by prolonged exposure to the x-raybegan to sue for damages.55 Forced to act by litigious patients, x-rayexperts began to respond. By April 1898, popular apprehension aboutthe ray’s latent effects reached such proportions that even the Councilof the Röntgen Society—a group unequivocally supportive of the newtechnology—resolved to appoint a Committee “to collect informationon the subject of the alleged injurious effects of Röntgen rays.”56

Any remaining doubts that prolonged exposure to x-rays might havegrave physiological consequences were dispelled by the first deathsamong early x-ray investigators. When Dally died in autumn 1904,Edison was despondent. He attributed his decision to abandon lucrativex-ray research to the suffering experienced by Dally and other x-rayworkers.57 When Edison first began to discuss the x-ray burns in thecountry’s newspapers, medical publications derided the inventor for“rehashing in the daily press facts that had been learned by physiciansthrough sad experience seven years ago.”58 By the time of Dally’sdeath, physicians already assumed that the dangers of x-radiation werecommonly understood.

Thus by the end of the first decade of x-ray experimentation, lay andexpert opinion concurred that the x-rays could cause severe physiologi-cal damage, if not death. Recognition of this fact confounds any simplenarratives of ignorance through which we might try to understand earlyinvestigators. Aware of radiation risk, at least a few investigators beganto conduct their research with the aid of protective clothing anddevices. The physicians William Rollins and Francis H. Williams, forexample, started to shield themselves even before the first sign ofinjury. As Williams later recalled, “I thought that rays having suchpower of penetrating matter, as the x-rays had, must have some effectupon the system, and therefore I protected myself.”59 Still others,particularly those who began their work in the first decade of x-rayexperimentation, might simply have assumed that their cancers werealready too far advanced to bother retiring from x-ray work.


Yet as Hickey suggested when likening roentgenologists to intrepidexplorers, others simply took on the role of willing sufferer, exposingthemselves to the x-ray long after the grave risks involved had beenamply demonstrated. In one such instance, the Philadelphia physicianCharles Lester Leonard (1861–1913) underwent one amputation afteranother (first the finger, then the hand and forearm, then the upper armat the shoulder) before succumbing to cancer in 1913 at the age of fifty-one.60 His pain, however, seems merely to have intensified his fascina-tion with the ray. Even after publishing warnings on the dangersbefalling the x-ray specialist, he continued his radiological investiga-tion of the urinary tract.61 The ten years of his most productive researchcoincided with the ten years of his “steadily increasing physicaldistress.”62 Another investigator, the surgeon Stephen Clifton Glidden(1870–1917) continued his work with the x-ray following the amputa-tion of several fingers in 1907. After further amputations made surgicalpractice impossible, Glidden began other investigations with the x-ray.Even the amputation of his arm at the shoulder did not dissuade himfrom his research, and in 1916 he began additional experiments withradium. Finally forced to cease practice later in the year due to illhealth, Glidden died on February 20, 1917.63 Mihran Krikor Kassabian(1870–1910) continued his work with the x-ray years after publishing areport on its hazards, “X-Ray as an Irritant,” in a prominent journal ofroentgenology.64 In 1903, even as the injuries to his hands grew moresevere, Kassabian accepted a position in the Roentgen-Ray Laboratoryat the Philadelphia Hospital.65 The itching, toughening, and blisteringof his skin continued, yet Kassabian persisted in his diagnostic andtherapeutic practice. By 1908, after a decade of relentless exposure tox-radiation, Kassabian was in serious condition. The fourth finger ofthe right hand was completely covered with horny tissue, and the lefthand had an open sore running across the area between the middle andfourth fingers. In April, the fingers were amputated to stop the spreadof x-ray induced cancer. The following year brought the appearance ofcancer in Kassabian’s axillary glands, which were also surgicallyremoved. When this wound failed to heal, surgeons cut further tissuefrom his chest. Throughout the period of these surgical excisions,Kassabian continued his x-ray practice, ceasing only when too weak towork. In 1910, as his important textbook on x-rays was appearing in itssecond edition, Kassabian died from cancer.66


Surely the most spectacular demonstrations of willing suffering,however, are found in Walter J. Dodd, a central figure in the foundingof roentgenology in the United States. “The name of Walter Dodd,”writes one historian, “is as infrangibly interlocked with the course ofearly American radiology as is that of Rontgen [sic] himself an integralpart of the scientific annals of Germany.”67 As early as November 1896(less than a year after Roentgen’s discovery in his Würzburg labora-tory), Dodd was tormented by severe dermatitis. Within five months,the pain was “beyond description,” and his face and hands appearedvisibly scalded. Dodd’s employer, the Massachusetts General Hospital,placed his name on a list of those with grave injuries. When the pain inhis hands kept him awake at night, Dodd paced the floor of the hospitalpharmacy, hands raised over his head.68 In July 1897, he received thefirst series of skin grafts performed by his friend, Dr. Charles AllenPorter of Boston (soon to become the nation’s leading expert in thetreatment of chronic x-ray injuries). The grafts proved unsuccessful,however, and by 1902, cancer had spread through his fingers. Thusbegan the effort to salvage Dodd’s “useful hands” for further work:

From that time on surgeon [Porter] and patient together fought stubbornlyand courageously to save as much as possible of those useful hands. Therewere fifty operations under ether, which lasted from an hour and a half tothree hours. The capable fingers were taken away bit by bit. Rather than yielda fragment of a joint, Dodd would endure the agony of keeping it for monthsafter it should have been removed. . . . [Often] Dodd went to the operating-table without knowing how much of his hands would be left when he awokefrom the ether.69

As Dodd and his surgeon evaluated how much to excise from eachcancer-ridden hand, they based their judgments on the finger’s relativeusefulness. Despite the agonizing pain caused by the exposure of rawnerve endings in a cancerous ulcer, Dodd put off the amputation of hislittle finger for months, fearing that its loss would leave his thumbnothing to press against—rendering it impossible to grasp the controlsof the x-ray.70

At first glance, this emphasis on utility would seem to evoke aconception of the white male body often articulated by historians of theearly twentieth century: namely, the body as machine, a collection ofinterchangeable parts subject to dismantling and reconstruction.71 Yetin crucial aspects, Dodd was far from this instrumental vision ofmanhood, neither so stoic nor so orderly. Dodd (at least the “Dodd”


recalled by biographers and colleagues) embraced his suffering. Unlikean impassive machine, Dodd was said to have “loved difficulty” and tohave sought it out for its own sake.72 Although painkillers would easilyhave made the performance of his work less excruciating (and perhapsmore efficient), Dodd reportedly refused narcotics, even his physician’sordered injections of morphine.73 He typically took only aspirin for hiswounds, wounds which his surgeon insisted must have caused moreconstant, intense physical suffering than any others he had seen.74

Upon awakening from surgical ether after yet another amputation,Dodd always returned immediately to his radiological work.75 “Every-body warned him when the danger became evident,” recalled onecolleague, “but he would not give up his work and was always eager forthe next case.”76 “No man,” noted Dodd’s biographer, “was ever moreenthusiastically absorbed in his task.”77 Even after Dodd’s face hadgrown parchment-like “from the fibrillary contractions of old scars,”wrote another friend, “[it] was never too inelastic to break into asmile.”78

Far from appearing pathological in the eyes of his colleagues (orsubsequent historians), Dodd’s embrace of pain and his unswervinglove for the agent of his destruction appear to have made him anexemplary roentgenologist.79 As one x-ray expert recalled, “Dodd wonthe respect and affection of everyone on the M.G.H. staff by his careful,painstaking work and by his ever-willing self-sacrifice.”80 Described asa “‘roentgen’ Saint,” Dodd’s enthusiasm for pain was treated reveren-tially by his fellows.81 According to some recollections, Dodd’scheerfulness not only won him respect and affection but also increasedhis scientific abilities. For example, when Dodd counseled patientsreluctant to undergo roentgen treatment or examination, he offeredstories from his experience. Patients, “touched and strengthened by thevisible evidence of his own suffering,” would acquiesce to the recom-mended diagnostic test or treatment.82 His biographer describes oneinstance when a “sturdy” young man petulantly refused a requestedradiological examination. One visit to the scarred and amputated Doddended all “boyish grumbling.” The boys who passed through the x-rayroom “met a man, and they would have stood on their heads for him.”83

Certainly these descriptions of Dodd’s happy suffering must beunderstood as part of the era’s funereal genre, lush praise given inmemory of a beloved colleague. Yet in their concentration, these wordsilluminate critical underlying assumptions about manliness, science,


and sacrifice present in the early twentieth century. Hardly machine-like or impassive, Dodd was lauded for his anti-utilitarian love of pain.Although in other circumstances such suffering might be indicative ofbarbarity (e.g. the “ancestral savages” of Lewis Henry Morgan) or ofpathology (e.g. the “masochism” of Richard von Krafft-Ebing), here asanctioned affiliation with “science” circumvents such connotations.Rather than appearing atavistic or perverse, Dodd’s willing sufferinghighlights his civility, his manliness, his rationality—indeed, hisscientificity. Like his fellow “martyrs” Leonard, Glidden, and Kassabian,Dodd not only endured repeated amputations and ulcerated nerveendings but also strode toward them “enthusiastically” in the name ofscience.

This enthusiastic rush toward death and dismemberment provedformative of the eclectic field known as “roentgenology,” as thefledgling community defined itself through its shared “spirit of sacri-fice.”84 Nowhere is definition more evident than in the official narra-tive crafted by Dr. Percy Brown, one-time president of the AmericanRoentgen Ray Society. Described by a colleague as one of the “greatliving suffering martyrs from this cause,” Brown carefully defined thefield according to the embrace of sacrifice.85 Within ninety days ofRoentgen’s first announcement, Brown insisted, x-ray investigatorsunderstood the prospect of danger. Armed with “ample warning” and afull “chance to retire,” many individuals abandoned their work with theray. Those who did, according to Brown, included: 1) profiteers whohoped to “exploit the x-rays” in popular exhibits; 2) physicists whounderstood that they’d “paved the way for the practical usefulness ofthe roentgen-rays” and hence turned to new investigations; and 3)medical practitioners who recognized the need to “relinquish” the rayto further development in “special hands.”86 In Brown’s account, thosewho remained in the face of published warnings were the true foundersof the science, “avowed and determined special workers, pioneers inthe cause of their Work and in many instances ultimate martyrs to it.”87

Brown thus sets the boundaries of roentgenology according to the willto martyrdom: “special workers” willing to endure pain becomescientists; those who leave, by definition, do not.88

The rhetoric of martyrdom adopted by Brown and his colleaguesserved several functions for the emerging professional community.Most obviously, the promotion of voluntary suffering helped alleviateconcern that practitioners would depart the field. Retrieved as noble


and heroic, the deaths of the field’s founders preserved and increasedthe image of the profession as a worthwhile calling and promised toattract new members to it. References to martyrdom also protectedexisting practitioners from popular criticism about unnecessary injuryand death. “By making the victims of X-ray induced carcinoma martyrsto science,” Daniel Serwer summarizes, “the medical radiologicalcommunity could hope to justify the loss of life and also thereby off-set. . . negative public reaction.”89 In the context of a larger culturalvaluation of voluntary suffering, turning destruction into glorioussacrifice helped to protect a newborn profession.

Yet it would be a gross misreading to say that professionalizinginvestigators simply deployed martyrdom as tactical rhetoric. Therhetoric of sacrifice acquired its fullest form in the tattered flesh of x-ray investigators. Scarred and limb-less roentgenologists came toembody the abstract cause of “science,” much as stigmata renderpalpable the ineffable presence of divinity. Indeed, embodiment mat-tered a great deal: by the late 1910s, “roentgenologists” were identifiedby their mutilated limbs.90 At one 1920 professional gathering, histo-rian Bettyann Holtzmann Kevles reports, so many attendees weremissing at least one hand that when the chicken dinner was served, noone could cut the meat.91 Participants in this and other macabre scenesforged a community not only through the inflated rhetoric of martyr-dom but also through the lived experience of dismemberment and pain.Injury became the basis for a shared scientific identity.92

The relationship between roentgenology and injury was materializednot only in the missing fingers and hands of the living but also inmonuments to the dead. As states tend to consolidate and definenational identity through war memorials, so, too, the young professionsolidified its scientific identity in the construction of public monu-ments. One of the more striking examples is an official tribute to the“martyrs of radiology” erected in the garden of Hamburg’s Saint GeorgHospital in the spring of 1936.93 The monument’s single vertical stonemight be read as a symbolic recovery of the individual investigator’samputated finger, revivified as part of the larger, undying body ofscience. The names of individual investigators are inscribed on its sidesin alphabetical order, de-emphasizing differences in rank and status andenhancing their shared scientificity. As in so many war memorials, theemphasis of the monument is on collective contribution to the higher


goal—in this case, collective contribution to the new science ofroentgenology.94

However, such collective memorials overlook full-time x-ray inves-tigators. None of those equally exposed to x-radiation—wives andother assistants, patients and laboratory animals—garners the high titleof “martyr.”95 With the important exception of two women, MarieCurie and the San Franciscan Elizabeth Fleischmann-Ascheim, theonly “Martyrs and pioneers of radiological science” to feature in thesedescriptions are men employed as full-time x-ray investigators.96 Bydubbing Fleischmann-Ascheim “America’s Joan of Arc,” roentgenolo-gists and the wider popular press preserved the status of the field as asacrificial scene without troubling its overarching masculinization:roentgenologists remain (male) “soldiers for science,” with the loneexception of this beautiful Jeanne d’Arc. (Fleischmann-Ascheim’sJudaism appears not to have hindered those who identified her with theyoung saint.97 ) References to Marie Curie’s exceptional “sacrifices”appeared regularly in American accounts only after her death in 1934.98

Most other accounts focused on professional men. Although techni-cians were occasionally included in the rosters of the dead (particularlythe first American “martyr,” Charles Madison Dally), those said topossess a true “sacrificial fidelity” generally were men with advanceddegrees in medicine or science.99

In a similar fashion, sacrifice was narrowed to the perils of radiation,neglecting all other dangers of x-ray work. Despite equal deadliness,none of the other hazards of roentgenological practice (e.g. theflammability of the film, the fragility of the large chemically-treatedglass plates, or the potential for electrocution from high-voltageequipment) produced a “martyr to science” in early twentieth-centuryaccounts.100 A 1929 fire at one x-ray storage area killed at least 124people, comparable to the numbers of investigators who succumbed tox-radiation in the entire country.101 No monuments were raised forthese dead, no glowing hagiographies composed. Countless industrialworkers might have been injured by electrocution, by broken glass, bythe movement of heavy equipment, by toxic chemicals, or by industrialfires. To preserve the special distinction of the field of roentgenology,however, only those workers succumbing to irradiation counted aswilling sufferers.

“Roentgenology” was thus characterized as that pursuit for whichcertain individuals endured bitter pain and disfigurement. “Roentgen-


ologists,” by implication, were those rare individuals willing to take onthe dangers of radiation. Just as the reverence of disciples maintains thepower of deities, or the dedication of individual citizens augments theboundaries of nations, so, too, a new science was entwined with a newsubject, the self-sacrificing scientist. Far from simply supplanting“religion” with “science,” then, late nineteenth-century physical re-search coupled enlightenment sensibilities and age-old customs of“disciplining-the-body-for-getting-at-the-truth.”102 The cause of roent-genology was consecrated with each additional finger removed.

Certainly the valorization of sacrifice present among early x-rayworkers was not the only narrative of scientific advancement availableat the time. An equally standard narrative of progress may be found inthe fortuitous scientific “accident,” such as Antoine-Henri Becquerel’s1896 discovery of natural radioactivity after leaving some uraniumrocks in a drawer containing photographic plates. Furthermore, one caneasily envision a professional community which took the idea of willfulsuffering as a problem to be understood rather than a value to bereproduced: consider, for instance, psychoanalytic studies of masoch-ism which proliferated even as Dodd enthusiastically returned to thesource of his pain. Despite other possible formulations, this communityof practice entwined pain with the pursuit of new knowledge, buildinga new field of research on an ethic of voluntary suffering. Rather thanpositioning this essay as for or against such suffering, I have here triedto describe how this ethic came into being, to mark it as a product oflate nineteenth-century American culture rather than an intrinsic,eternal demand of “science.” Such historical understanding certainlywon’t free us from the tendency to couple knowledge and pain, but itmay enable better determinations of when, and how, we want to takeour blows.

NOTES

For helpful criticism on earlier versions of this essay, the author thanks DeborahFitzgerald, Evelynn Hammonds, Lucy Maddox, Leo Marx, and the anonymousreviewers of American Quarterly. Support for this research was generously providedby Bates College, the Centre for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine atthe University of Manchester, and the Bakken Museum and Library for Electricity inLife.


1. For example, see [n.a.], “Untoward Effects of X-rays,” Boston Medical andSurgical Journal 152 (Feb. 1905): 173; or S. Burt Wolbach, “Summary of the Effectsof Repeated Roentgen-Ray Exposures Upon the Human Skin, Antecedent to theFormation of Carcinoma,” American Journal of Roentgenology and Radiology 13(Dec. 1925): 139–43.

2. “Operated on 72 Times: Roentgenologist Has Lost Eight Fingers and an Eye forScience,” New York Times, 12 Mar. 1926, p. 22, col. 2–4. See also “Undergoes 50thOperation: Dr. Baetjer of Johns Hopkins is a Victim of X-Ray Infections,” New YorkTimes 2 May 1924, p. 26, col. 4.

3. Percy Brown, American Martyrs to Science through the Roentgen Rays (Spring-field, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1936), 98.

4. Sande Bishop, Radiology in New England: The First Hundred Years (1896–1995)(Boston: The Massachusetts Radiological Society and The New England RoentgenRay Society, 1995), 74.

5. John V. Pickstone, Ways of Knowing: A New History of Science, Technology, andMedicine (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 2000), 48. Historians of radiologyhave joined early roentgenologists in stressing the “enthusiasm” of early researchers.“The answer” to why so many x-ray investigators cheerfully subjected themselves tomanifestly life-threatening work, writes one historian, “seems to be largely enthusi-asm.” See Stephen B. Dewing, Modern Radiology in Historical Perspective (Spring-field, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1962), 83.

6. See, e.g., R. Marie Griffith, “Apostles of Abstinence: Fasting and Masculinityduring the Progressive Era,” American Quarterly 52 (Dec. 2000): 599–638; GailBederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in theUnited States, 1880–1917 (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1995); Michael Grossberg,“Institutionalizing Masculinity: The Law as a Masculine Profession” in Mark C.Carnes and Clyde Griffen, eds., Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinityin Victorian America (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1990): 133–51; Elizabeth H.Pleck and Joseph H. Pleck, eds. The American Man (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1980).

7. Review of this exaggerated assessment may be found in Charles E. Rosenberg, NoOther Gods: On Science and American Social Thought (1976; Baltimore: JohnsHopkins Univ. Press, 1997]): 2ff, and John Brooke and Geoffrey Cantor, Reconstruct-ing Nature: The Engagement of Science and Religion (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1998).For a period statement on this “war,” see Andrew Dickson White’s classic A History ofthe Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, 2 vols. (1896; New York: D.Appleton and Company, 1919).

8. I here employ quotation marks around “science” to highlight the term’s inchoateand shifting character. This essay does not address the innumerable people, institutions,practices, and beliefs which have been (or might be) labeled “science.” Rather, as Iexplain further below, it concerns the transformation of these heterogeneous, disputedformations into a singular, idealized abstraction, which was thought to demandsacrifice. I will use the term “science” to evoke that mobile totality, with full awarenessof the tremendous disunity and plurality of the sciences. While I typically avoidincessant quotation marks in the interest of readability, hopefully the complexity of theterm will remain evident throughout.

9. A final note on terminology: like most people engaged in a novel endeavor, earlypractitioners of roentgenology debated nomenclature. I here use the terms “roentgenol-ogy” and “roentgenologist” in favor of the now more familiar term “radiology,” sinceit corresponds to the name selected by the first relevant professional body in the UnitedStates, the American Roentgen Ray Society. “Radiology,” moreover, might connote


any study of high-energy radiation, while “roentgenology” refers more specifically tothe field of x-rays, the subject of this paper. I employ the anglicized spelling“Roentgen” for the German proper name, and the alternate “Röntgen” only whendirectly citing period sources.

10. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin andSpread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983), 4. Among the many recent treatments ofnationalism, studies which give particular focus to the significance of sacrifice includeMichael Rowlands, “Memory, Sacrifice and the Nation,” New Formations 30 (winter1996): 8–17; Adam J. Lerner, “The Nineteenth-Century Monument and the Embodi-ment of National Time,” and Jean Bethke Elshtain, “Sovereignty, Identity, Sacrifice,”both in Marjorie Ringrose and Adam J. Lerner, eds., Reimagining the Nation(Buckingham: Open Univ. Press, 1993).

11. The professionalization of x-ray work has been described at length by others; Ihere focus only on the centrality of martyrdom in this process. For other usefulaccounts, see Sande Bishop, Radiology in New England; Arthur C. Christie, “FiftyYears of Progress in Radiology” in The American Roentgen Ray Society, 1900–1950:Commemorating the Golden Anniversary of the Society (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C.Thomas, 1950), 25–29; Arthur U. Desjardins, “The Status of Radiology in America,”Journal of the American Medical Association 92 (Mar. 1929): 1035–39; Joel D.Howell, Technology in the Hospital: Transforming Patient Care in the Early TwentiethCentury (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1995), esp. 103–32; Nancy Knight,“The New Light: X-Rays and Medical Futurism” in Joseph Corn, ed., ImaginingTomorrow: History, Technology, and the American Future (Cambridge, Mass.: MITPress, 1986); Stanley Joel Reiser, Medicine and the Reign of Technology (Cambridge:Cambridge Univ. Press, 1978), 58–60; and Ruth Brecher and Edward Brecher, TheRays: A History of Radiology in the United States and Canada (Baltimore: TheWilliams and Wilkins Company, 1969). Canonical narratives of Roentgen’s discoveryhave been scrutinized only rarely. For two such critiques, see Lisa Cartwright,Screening the Body: Tracing Medicine’s Visual Culture (Minneapolis, Minn.: Univ. ofMinnesota, 1995); and Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nded. (1962; Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1970), 57–59.

12. Robert G. Arns discusses changes in “finicky” x-ray tubes in “The High-VacuumX-Ray Tube: Technological Change in Social Context,” Technology and Culture 38(Oct. 1997): 852–890.

13. Equipment salespeople, who repeatedly demonstrated the efficacy of theirmerchandise for potential customers, were also at risk for x-ray injuries. Boston x-raysalesman Frank Howard Swett, for instance, died in 1929 from complications resultingfrom x-ray exposure. See Bishop, Radiology in New England, 39–42. For a furtherdescription of some of the manual labor involved in early x-ray work, see Merrill C.Sosman, “Roentgenology at Harvard,” Harvard Medical Alumni Bulletin 21 (Apr.1947): 65–76.

14. Carl Beck, Röntgen Ray Diagnosis and Therapy (New York: D. Appleton andCompany, 1904), 368ff; Brown, American Martyrs to Science, 33, 40-41; Ruth Brecherand Edward Brecher, The Rays: A History of Radiology in the United States andCanada (Baltimore: The Williams and Wilkins Company, 1969), 163.

15. [n.a.], “Death of a Famous Woman Radiographer,” San Francisco Chronicle,Saturday, Aug. 5, 1905, p. 10, col. 7. See also Peter E. Palmquist, ElizabethFleischmann: Pioneer X-ray Photographer (Berkeley, Calif.: Judah L. Magnes Mu-seum, 1990).

16. [n.a.], “The Woman Who Takes the Best Radiographs in the World,” SanFrancisco Chronicle, Sunday, June 3, 1900, p. 30. The role of roentgenology in the war


is described in detail in W.C. Borden, The Use of the Röntgen Ray by the MedicalDepartment of the United States Army in the War with Spain 1898 (Washington, D.C.:Government Printing Office, 1900). The 1898 war was not the first to employroentgenology; x-rays were taken of soldiers returning to Italy from the EthiopianCampaign of 1896 and were first used in field operations as early as the TirahCampaign of 1897. See Lawrence Reynolds, “The History of the Use of the RoentgenRay in Warfare” in André J. Bruwer, ed., Classic Descriptions in DiagnosticRoentgenology, vol. 2 (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1964), 1307–17.

17. Bettyann Holtzmann Kevles, Naked to the Bone: Medical Imaging in theTwentieth Century (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1997), 48; Émil H.Grubbé, X-Ray Treatment: Its Origin, Birth and Early History (Saint Paul, Minn.: TheBruce Publishing Company, 1949), 139–40.

18. Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in theGilded Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), 91.

19. Brewster, The Martyrs of Science (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1841).20. Letter from Joseph Henry to Alexander Dallas Bache, quoted in Robert V. Bruce,

The Launching of Modern American Science: 1846–1876 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ.Press, 1987), 220.

21. The APS noted that members of their organization were “Animated by a love ofscience.” See “To the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth ofPennsylvania” [Jan. 17, 1800], Early Proceedings of the American PhilosophicalSociety . . . 1744 to 1838 (Philadelphia: McCalla and Stavely, 1884), 292.

22. [n.a.], “Editor’s Table: Purpose and Plan of Our Enterprise,” Popular ScienceMonthly 1 (May 1872): 113. See also Rev. Charles Kingsley, “The Study of PhysicalScience: A Lecture to Young Men,” Popular Science Monthly 1 (Aug. 1872): 456.

23. T.C. Mendenhall, “The Relations of Men of Science to the General Public,”Science 16 (Oct. 24, 1890): 233.

24. E.E. Slosson, “The Relative Value of Life and Learning,” The Independent (Dec.12, 1895), 7.

25. Further discussions of the history of the concept of “science” may be found inJohn Heilbron, “Historiographical Issues on the Problem of Representing the Rise ofModern Science,” paper presented at the International Summer School in the History ofScience, Bologna, Sept. 16, 1997; Stanley M. Guralnick, Science and the Ante-BellumAmerican College (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1975), 60; SydneyRoss, “Scientist: The Story of a Word,” Annals of Science 18 (June 1962): 65–85;Roslynn D. Haynes, From Faust to Strangelove: Representations of the Scientist inWestern Literature (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1994), 6–8; Leonard N.Neufeldt. “The Science of Power: Emerson’s Views on Science and Technology inAmerica,” Journal of the History of Ideas 38 (Apr.–June 1977): 333.

26. Alexandra Oleson and John Voss, eds., The Organization of Knowledge inModern America, 1860–1920 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1979), ix.

27. Here I describe the relationship between science and its resulting applications inaccordance with period sources. Historians of technology have revealed numerousflaws in this received model of the science-technology relationship.

28. Oleson and Voss, The Organization of Knowledge, xi.29. See Mather, The Sacrificer: An Essay Upon the Sacrifices Wherewith a

Christian, laying a Claim to an Holy Priesthood, Endeavours to Glorify God (Boston:T. Fleet, 1714), 44 and A Brief Essay Upon the Cross (Boston: John Allen, 1714).

30. T.J. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformationof American Culture: 1880–1920 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981); Trachtenberg,Incorporation of America, 140ff. On changes in “sacrificial thinking” in this period,


see Susan L. Mizruchi, The Science of Sacrifice: American Literature and ModernSocial Theory (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998); and Alice Owen Letvin,Sacrifice in the Surrealist Novel: The Impact of Early Theories of Primitive Religion onthe Depiction of Violence in Modern Fiction (New York: Garland Publishing, 1990).

31. Gerald F. Linderman, Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in theAmerican Civil War (New York: Free Press, 1987), 291. The advent and disseminationof anesthesia also transformed cultural attitudes toward pain. See S. Weir Mitchell,“The Birth and Death of Pain” [a poem read at the fiftieth anniversary of thedemonstration of ether], Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 135 (Oct. 15, 1896):386; and Martin S. Pernick, A Calculus of Suffering: Pain, Professionalism, andAnesthesia in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Columbia Univ., 1985).

32. On the artist, see T.S. Eliot, “Tradition and Individual Talent” in The SacredWood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (1920; London: Methuen and Co., 1948), 52–53; on the Christian, see Charles A. Briggs, “The Salvation Army,” North AmericanReview 159 (Dec. 1894): 697–710.

33. Quoted in Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America, 36.34. Sigmund Freud, “On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of

Love” in The Standard Edition to the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, trans. JamesStrachey, vol. 11 (1912; London: The Hogarth Press, 1957), 190.

35. Theodor Reik, Masochism in Modern Man, trans. Margaret H. Beigel andGertrud M. Kurth (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Company, 1941), 398.

36. Reik, Masochism in Modern Man, 382.37. “Suffering,” Beecher declared in 1870, “is universally accepted as the measure

of value.” Beecher, “Suffering, the Measure of Worth,” The Sermons of Henry WardBeecher in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, “Plymouth Pulpit,” First Series, 327, quotedin Pernick, A Calculus of Suffering, 279–80.

38. See, e.g., Frank Moore, Women of the War: Their Heroism and Self-Sacrifice(Hartford, Conn.: S.S. Scranton and Co., 1866). For further discussions of women,gender, and sacrifice in the nineteenth century, see Mary Poovey, “Speaking of theBody: Mid-Victorian Constructions of Female Desire” in Mary Jacobus, Evelyn FoxKeller, and Sally Shuttlesworth, eds., Body/Politics: Women and the Discourses ofScience (New York: Routledge, 1990), esp. 33; Judith Rowbotham, “‘Soldiers ofChrist?’ Images of Female Missionaries in Late Nineteenth-Century Britain: Issues ofHeroism and Martyrdom,” Gender & History 12 (Apr. 2000): 82–106; Drew GilpinFaust, “Altars of Sacrifice: Confederate Women and the Narratives of War,” Journal ofAmerican History 76 (Mar. 1990): 1200–28; and Pernick, A Calculus of Suffering, 47–9.

39. William James, The Essential Writings, ed. Bruce W. Wilshire (Albany, N.Y.:State Univ. of New York Press, 1989), 352.

40. [n.a.], “The Future of American Science,” Science 1 (Feb. 1883): 3.41. Henry Adams, “The Dynamo and the Virgin” in The Education of Henry Adams

(Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1961), 381.42. Greene to Thomson, Dec. 20, 1896, in Harold J. Abrahams and Marion B. Savin,

eds., Selections from the Scientific Correspondence of Elihu Thomson (Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press, 1971), 247–248.

43. Slosson, “The Relative Value of Life and Learning,” 7.44. Grubbé, X-Ray Treatment, 89.45. Ibid. Though Grubbé was rare among early x-ray workers in disavowing

knowledge of the ray’s dangers, in other ways his narrative offers a comfortablyconventional model of scientific progress: through the scientist’s noble sacrifice,society passes from ignorance to truth, from suffering to salvation, from risk to safety.


His claim of ignorance—like his disputed claim to have been the first investigator inthe world to develop and discuss x-ray sequelae—is difficult to maintain under closerinspection. See Brecher and Brecher, The Rays, 91ff; and Paul C. Hodges, The Life andTimes of Emil H. Grubbé (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1964).

46. P.M. Hickey, “The First Decade of American Roentgenology,” AmericanJournal of Roentgenology 20 (Aug. 1928): 150.

47. Asked to locate a bullet in the head of a wounded child, Professor John Danieland Dr. William L. Dudley decided to experiment with the feasibility with skull x-raysin Feb. 1896. As Professor Daniel later recalled the chain of events, Dudley, “with hischaracteristic devotion to the cause of science,” agreed to lend himself to the first trial.Daniel proceeded to expose his partner’s scalp, one-half inch from the ray, for an hour.Twenty-one days later, all hair had fallen out from the area of Dudley’s head closest tothe tube’s discharge. See John Daniel, “The X-rays,” Science 3 (Apr. 10, 1896): 562–63.

48. Hawks had been using the x-ray to reveal the bones of his jaw for spectators.49. [n.a.], “Deleterious Effects of X Rays [sic] on the Human Body,” Electrical

Review 29 (Aug. 12, 1896): 78; Kevles, Naked to the Bone, 47.50. G.A. Frei, “Deleterious Effects of X Rays on the Human Body: Further Evidence

that Repeated Exposure to the Rays Produces a Sunburn Effect,” Electrical Review 29(Aug. 19, 1896): 95.

51. Fred S. Jones, “Deleterious Effects of X Rays on the Human Body,” ElectricalReview 29 (Sept. 9, 1896): 127.

52. S.J.R., “Some Effects of the X-Rays on the Hands,” Nature 54 (Oct. 29, 1896):621.

53. Whether the ray itself were responsible for the so-called “x-ray burns,” however,had not yet been decided. The New Yorker Hawks, for instance, dismissed the x-ray asa factor in his injuries. Positing that the damage done to his skin was “purely anelectrical effect . . . the ray has nothing to do with it,” Hawks reported that his mangledskin became entirely “healthy again” within a matter of days (H.D. Hawks, “ThePhysiological Effects of the Roentgen Rays,” The Electrical Engineer 22 [Sept. 16,1896]: 276.) Hawks was not alone in looking beyond the ray to explain the “burning”effects. Other researchers attributed x-ray injuries to the ozone produced by theapparatus, to a “brush discharge” which occurred when the ray was held too near theskin, to ultra-violet rays, or to “static changes” which interfered with the nutrition ofthe exposed body part. Some suggested that only peculiarly sensitive patients weresusceptible to x-ray burns; others pointed to faulty or weak x-ray tubes. By late 1896,however, the vitriolic debate between noted electrical and medical experts over thecauses of the observed skin effects had waned, partly due to the published findings ofthe eminent investigator Elihu Thomson. As mentioned above, Thomson tested, on hisown body, the theory that the ray itself was the source of the problem. In the eyes ofThomson and many of his colleagues, the growing, seeping blister on the exposed handseemed to confirm the danger of the ray. See Elihu Thomson, “Some Notes onRoentgen Rays,” The Electrical Engineer 22 (Nov. 18, 1896): 520–521, “RöntgenRays Act Strongly on the Tissues,” The Electrical World 28 (Nov. 28, 1896): 666, and“Roentgen Rays Act Strongly on the Tissues,” Electrical Review 29 (Nov. 25, 1896):260, “Roentgen Rays Act Strongly on the Tissues,” The Electrical Engineer 22 (Nov.25, 1896): 534; and the responses to this report by E.A. Codman, “The Cause of Burnsfrom X-Rays, ” Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 135 (Dec. 10, 1896): 610–11;and R.B. Owens, “Effect of Röntgen Rays on the Tissues,” The Electrical World 28(Dec. 19, 1896): 759.


54. Philip Atkinson, Electricity for Everybody; Its Nature and Uses Explained, 2nded. (New York: The Century Company, 1897), 239 (the second edition was expandedto include a tenth chapter on the new rays); Samuel Howard Monell, A System ofInstruction in X-Ray Methods and Medical Uses of Light, Hot-Air, Vibration, and HighFrequency Currents (New York: E.R. Pelton, 1902), 26.

55. On patients’ lesions, see J.C. White, “Dermatitis Caused by X-Rays,” BostonMedical and Surgical Journal 135 (Dec. 3, 1896): 583. On litigation, see Serwer, “TheRise of Radiation Protection,” 39–40; and Tal Golan, “Science on the Witness Stand:Expert Testimony in U.S. Courts, 1870–1923” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of California,Berkeley, 1997).

56. Hector Alfred Colwell and Sidney Russ, X-ray and Radium Injuries, Prevention,and Treatment (London: Oxford, 1934), 8–9.

57. Kevles, Naked to the Bone, 47.58. See [n.a.], “Edison and X-Ray Injuries,” Journal of the American Medical

Association 41 (Aug. 22, 1903): 499.59. Quoted in Otto Glasser, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen and the Early History of

Röntgen Rays (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1934), 293–4.60. Charles Allen Porter, “The Pathology and Surgical Treatment of Chronic X-Ray

Dermatitis,” Transactions of the American Roentgen Ray Society (1908): 128, 169–70;P.M. Hickey, “The First Decade of American Roentgenology,” American Journal ofRoentgenology 20 (Aug. 1928): 155; Brown, American Martyrs to Science, 123.

61. C.L. Leonard, “The Protection of the Roentgenologist,” New York MedicalJournal 86 (Nov. 1907): 917–20. See also C.L. Leonard, “The X-Ray ‘Burn’: ItsProductions and Prevention. Has the X-Ray any Therapeutic Properties?” New YorkMedical Journal 68 (July 2, 1898): 18–20.

62. Brown, American Martyrs to Science, 123.63. Ibid., 158–59.64. Mihran Krikor Kassabian, “X-Ray as Irritant,” American X-Ray Journal 7

(1900): 784–86.65. Brown, American Martyrs to Science, 93.66. Ibid., 97–98.67. [Percy Brown?], “Walter James Dodd, 1869–1916,” unpublished, undated typed

manuscript, in Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts(hereafter CLM), B MS C42.5, 1. John Macy, Walter James Dodd: A BiographicalSketch (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1918), 11. Unfortunately, I have beenunable to locate Dodd’s papers at the Massachusetts General Hospital, CountwayMedical Library, Univ. of Vermont, Radiological Society of North America, Massa-chusetts Medical Society, or American College of Radiology and must rely onbiographies and obituaries here. I would be indebted to the reader who directed me toDodd’s private papers.

68. Porter, “The Pathology and Surgical Treatment of Chronic X-Ray Dermatitis,”141; Macy, Walter James Dodd, 21, 23.

69. Porter, “The Pathology and Surgical Treatment of Chronic X-Ray Dermatitis,”141; John P. Tampas, M.D., “Hampton Lecture,” Department of Radiology, MedicalCenter Hospital of Vermont, photocopy, p. 8, 26. I am grateful to Dr. Tampas forproviding me with a copy of his lecture.

70. Porter, “The Pathology and Surgical Treatment of Chronic X-Ray Dermatitis,”143, 145.

71. This evaluation of early twentieth-century visions of the white male body can befound in Anson Rabinbach, The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins ofModernity (Berkeley, Calif.: Univ. of California Press, 1990); Roxanne Panchasi,


“Reconstructions: Prosthetics and the Rehabilitation of the Male Body in World War IFrance,” differences 7 (spring 1995): 110–40; Bill Brown, “Science Fiction, theWorld’s Fair, and the Prosthetics of Empire, 1910–1915” in Cultures of United StatesImperialism, ed. Amy Kaplan and Donald E. Pease (Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press,1993), 129–63; Lisa Herschbach, “Prosthetic Reconstructions: Making the Industry,Re-making the Body, Modeling the Nation‚” History Workshop Journal 44 (1997): 23–57, and Siegfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution toAnonymous History (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1948).

72. Macy, Walter James Dodd, 58.73. Ibid., 29. Porter reports administering opiates to Dodd on one occasion (“The

Pathology and Surgical Treatment of Chronic X-Ray Dermatitis,” 144).74. Porter, “The Pathology and Surgical Treatment of Chronic X-Ray Dermatitis,”

159; Macy, Walter James Dodd, 29.75. Macy, Walter James Dodd, 26; Sosman, “Roentgenology at Harvard,” 71.76. Harris P. Mosher, quoted in Sosman, “Roentgenology at Harvard,” 69.77. Macy, Walter James Dodd, 27.78. Brown, American Martyrs to Science, 149–50.79. Only one commentator appears to have adopted the term “masochism” when

describing the so-called “martyrs”: see Cartwright, Screening the Body, 110, 128.80. Sosman, “Roentgenology at Harvard,” 68.81. [n.a.], “Walter James Dodd, 1869–1916,” 6.82. Macy, Walter James Dodd, 35. One might imagine that patients would refuse

treatment after hearing stories of the physician’s own anguish; no records exist toascertain how, exactly, Dodd managed to inspire his patients.

83. Macy, Walter James Dodd, 36.84. Lewis Gregory Cole, “In Memoriam,” The American Journal of Roentgenology

4 (1917): 630.85. George E. Pfahler, “Fifty Years of Trials and Tribulations in Radiology” in The

American Roentgen Ray Society, 1900–1950: Commemorating the Golden Anniversaryof the Society (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1950), 17.

86. Brown, American Martyrs to Science, 16.87. Ibid.88. Brown’s emphasis on the special character of “Work” echoes usage found in

contemporary artistic and literary circles (such as Alfred Stieglitz’s journal, CameraWork) and contributes to the aura of unprofitable devotion permeating both science andaesthetics. Unlike being “in work” or “out of work,” here “Work” is a pure,preposition-less thing in itself, cleansed of specific social relations. On nineteenth- andtwentieth-century transformations in the concept of “work,” see Raymond Williams,Keywords (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1976), 334–37.

89. Serwer, “The Rise of Radiation Protection,” 63.90. Kevles, Naked to the Bone, 47.91. Ibid., 48.92. The political theorist Wendy Brown discusses the place of injury in the

constitution of political identities in late modernity in her States of Injury: Power andFreedom in Late Modernity (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1995), 52–76.

93. This monument was part of a broader post-WWI remembrance of radiology,which sought not only to carry the x-ray’s wartime prominence forward into thepeacetime promotion of radiology but also to reunite (symbolically and practically) aninternational field divided by the war. Percy Brown’s 1936 book, American Martyrs toScience through the Roentgen Ray, also contributed to this effort in a particularlynationalistic vein. For a lucid general discussion of the significance of memorials,


portraits, and other forms of commemoration in cultural understandings of “science,”see Ludmilla Jordanova, “Presidential Address: Remembrance of Science Past,”British Journal for the History of Science 33 (Dec. 2000): 387–406.

94. Michael Rowlands, “Memory, Sacrifice, and the Nation,” New Formations 30(winter 1996): 11.

95. Researchers frequently experimented on their wives and other assistants todiscover the effects of x-rays. See, e.g., S.H. Sharpsteen, “The History of an X-rayBurn,” The Electrical Engineer 24 (July 8, 1897): 10–11. Laboratory animals, too,were expended in the search for new knowledge of the rays. See the discussion ofWilliam Herbert Rollin’s experiments with guinea pigs in Kevles, Naked to the Bone,51.

96. Brown, American Martyrs to Science, 4; [n.a.], “Death of a Famous WomanRadiographer”; [n.a.], “The Woman Who Takes the Best Radiographs in the World.”X-radiation made its presence felt outside the laboratory as well; other communitiesadversely impacted by early x-ray exposure are described in Jacalyn Duffin andCharles R.R. Hayter, “Baring the Sole: The Rise and Fall of the Shoe-FittingFluoroscope,” Isis 91 (June 2000): 260–82; and Rebecca Herzig, “Removing Roots:‘North American Hiroshima Maiden Syndrome’ and the X-ray,” Technology andCulture 40: 4 (Oct. 1999): 723–45.

97. Brown, American Martyrs to Science, 49. More recently, Peter Palmquistelaborates on the exceptional achievements of Fleischmann-Ascheim, a young Jewishwoman who apparently never completed high school, by comparing her accomplish-ments (and heroic sacrifices) to that other famously exceptional woman in science,Mme. Curie. Again, Fleischmann-Ascheim’s exceptionality is preserved, maintainingthe general masculinization of the field. See Palmquist, Elizabeth Fleischmann, 10.

98. On representations of Curie’s sacrifice, and the ways it strengthened popularconceptions of appropriate womanhood, see Susan Lindee, “The Scientific Romance:Purity, Self-Sacrifice, and Passion in Popular Biographies of Marie Curie,” paperpresented at the annual meeting of the History of Science Society, Atlanta, Georgia,Nov. 8, 1996; Helena M. Pycior, “Marie Curie’s ‘Anti-Natural Path’: Time Only forScience and Family” in Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science, 1789–1979, ed. Pnina G. Abir-Am and Dorinda Outram (New Brunswick, N.J.: RutgersUniv. Press, 1987), esp. 213. Adrienne Rich treats the significance of Curie’s woundsin “Power, “ in The Dream of a Common Language, Poems 1974–1977 (New York:Norton and Company, 1978), 3.

99. Brown, American Martyrs to Science, 264.100. On some of these other dangers, see Sosman, “Roentgenology at Harvard,” 66–

67.101. Dewing, Modern Radiology in Historical Perspective, 75; Kevles, Naked to the

Bone, 110.102. This phrase comes from Talal Asad’s provocative “Notes on Body Pain and

Truth in Medieval Christian Ritual,” Economy and Society 12 (Aug. 1983): 294.

Documents

In the Name of Science: Suffering, Sacrifice, and the ... · had been investigating x-rays since the news of Roentgen’s discovery first hit the States in 1896, working primarily